The Mehringers are against it, the Marktlers are for it: In the debate about the planned large wind farm in the state forest between Altötting and Burghausen, one referendum follows another. Now things are getting concrete in Haiming, the third of a total of seven municipalities in whose areas the wind farm should extend. The “Gegenwind Altötting” initiative says it has now submitted enough signatures to the Haiming town hall to bring about a referendum there too. The local council must decide on Thursday how the municipality of Haiming will react to this.
Mehring and Marktl had dealt with the “headwind” citizens’ petition, which was also formulated in the same way there, differently. The Mehring municipal council had declared the petition admissible and countered it with its own council petition in favor of a wind farm. With a participation rate of around 75 percent, the citizens of Mehring decided against the wind farm at the end of January with a two-thirds majority. The state government, the state forests and the project developer Qair initially had to reduce the number of turbines from 40 to 30, but were then able to save one turbine by moving it to the area of another municipality.
In Marktl, the local council had declared the citizens’ petition’s demand that the municipality should use “all legally possible means” against the wind farm to be too vague and thus inadmissible. Instead, together with “Gegenwind” representatives, they had formulated a council petition for four turbines on precisely defined plots of land. The Marktl residents have now approved these four turbines with a good 60 percent, at the same time as the European elections and with a voter turnout of around 70 percent.
In the 2,500-resident community of Haiming, the wind farm will probably be voted on again without a simultaneous election. If the local council allows the citizens’ petition on Thursday, a referendum would have to be held in September at the latest. There will probably be no shortage of signatures: According to information from the town hall, the required ten percent of eligible voters would be reached with 207 signatures. “Gegenwind” submitted lists with 419 signatures, but these still have to be checked for validity.
Since Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs Hubert Aiwanger (FW) proposed at a public meeting in Haiming to increase the minimum distance of each turbine from the nearest settlement from 1000 to 1200 meters and to forego two wind turbines accordingly, the issue is no longer about nine turbines, but only seven out of a total of 27. Aiwanger, the state forests and Qair have also already dispensed with two more wind turbines on Neuötting land in order to appease residents in the Marktl district of Schützing.
The municipal clause is to be abolished soon
On this occasion at the beginning of May, Aiwanger also indicated for the first time that the state forests should no longer be dependent on the approval of the respective municipality for wind farm projects in their forests. However, for the Altötting wind farm, this so-called municipal clause will still be adhered to. Last week, after a cabinet meeting, Aiwanger and Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) announced that the municipal clause would be deleted by a resolution of the state forests’ supervisory board. This could happen quickly and within a few weeks.
The minister did not repeat his commitment to sticking to the current arrangement for the Altötting wind farm. A ministry spokesperson also avoided making a clear statement in response to a written request from the SZ. Experience has shown “that the clauses lead to massive delays and hardly acceptable planning uncertainties in the urgently needed expansion of wind power in Bavaria,” the ministry said. The supervisory board should delete the municipal clause “very soon” and discuss the future contract design. “The effects of an amended supervisory board resolution on existing contracts must then be examined.”
Before the supervisory board makes a decision, Aiwanger wants to “get in touch with the top municipal associations.” The president of the Bavarian Association of Municipalities, Uwe Brandl (CSU), has stated that he would have liked to have had such contact before Aiwanger’s public announcement that he would delete the municipal clause. In return, he is demanding that the municipalities have a kind of first economic right of access to possible wind power sites in the state forest.